People you meet

One of the really pleasant features of living in Aksum is the opportunity to meet some of the visitors to the town. Tourists, backpackers, trekkers and international aid workers/volunteers taking some well-earned rest arrive from all over the world and it is a pleasure to sit down with some of them to discuss their experiences.

One such visitor was Phoebe, an American who was staying with Mariama, my University-based IFESH colleague. She had a rich history in international aid and development work, particularly in Africa but most notably in Uganda where she was involved in a post-conflict education initiative with the former child soldiers of Joseph Kony and the Lords Resistance Army (LRA). Some of you may have read the recent media coverage following the posting of a film on the internet called ‘Invisible Children’ that has gone viral and reawakened the world to Kony’s terrorism. 

Some of Phoebe’s accounts were harrowing yet uplifting in that they demonstrated the capacity of human nature to overcome the horrors and violence that have attended the experiences of so many families. What must it have been like for a teacher to work in a school with students who were responsible for the deaths of his immediate family? How do you help a 14 year old develop the capacity to be compassionate when all he has known is the ‘law of the gun’?

In all this type of work it is easy to forget the impact that such events can have on those that offer aid and support. How do you maintain your equilibrium in such an unsettling environment? After all, it is not unknown for aid workers themselves to suffer from post-traumatic stress. Thankfully, it is Phoebe’s love of animals that has provided her with the comfort and distraction necessary to cope with the consequences of endemic violence. She is currently working on a 3-month project studying primates in Zambia. It is a world away from Kony’s child soldiers and will do wonders for her own health and wellbeing.  Where she goes after Zambia has yet to be determined but, be assured, she will do great work.

I was humbled by Phoebe’s accounts and immensely privileged to have met such an inspirational women. Her stories make some of the challenges I have to face at the University pale into insignificance. Before coming here I occupied a world where impact and change dominated the professional discourse. They’re still with me but the context ensures you view these concepts in very different ways. I have come to learn that assessing impact in Ethiopia routinely resists attempts to make judgements based on the observable, measurable and quantifiable (what would Ofsted do here?) while change is incremental and, at times, painfully slow. The realisation that the ‘impact’ you are likely to have during a placement is so indeterminate is, at first, a little unsettling. Yes it would be nice to conclude a placement with some tangible evidence that you have made a substantial contribution but I have come to accept that the most profound impact takes place in people’s minds and that is altogether much harder to get at let alone measure. So, inspired by people like Phoebe and in true VSO style, I’ll continue to ‘share my skills’, in the hope that it goes some way to ‘changing lives’.

PS: The attached photograph is of (from left to right), Pat (VSO Volunteer, Finote Salem), Viv, Mary (IFESH Volunteer, Bahir Dar University), Phoebe and Mariama (IFESH Volunteer, Aksum University). Every one a diamond!